Now I'm curious -- what is the proper way to eat a steak in such a situation? Are they supposed to be so tender you can cut them with a fork or spoon? Are you supposed to pick up the steak and tear off bites with your teeth? Are you supposed to carry around your own personal knife and use that to cut the meat?

Yes, Thais use a fork and a spoon to eat, not chopsticks like many other South-East Asian countries. Therefore, I find it strange that Thai restaurants in the US that are run by Thais give you chopsticks.

Your words are a little bit misleading. As far as I know, Vietnamese are the only Southeast Asian people who eat with chopsticks on daily basis.And, yes, we (Southeast Asian) eat with spoon and fork (often only spoon)

Well, Singaporeans do use chopsticks (and fork and spoon). But I also have been to a similar situation to this comic in Vietnam, where I would have preferred a knife to a spoon (no chopsticks at that restaurant)

As someone native from South-East asian region, I can say that a lot of local people use spoon more often than chopsticks on daily basis. Though, I think it all depends on the kind of foods you eat. A lot of restaurants that sell chinese (or other east asian countries) foods such as noodles, sushi, etc, will provide chopsticks for their customers who want to try to eat the food as close as possible like those east asian countries people do. Don't forget that some of South East Asian people are Chinese desendants too. They like to keep doing their anchestor traditions on daily basis and it's kind of blending with the majority in those countries. As for Singapore, they have three biggest communities there, i.e. Chinese, Indian, and Malay. So, for countries like Singapore that have significant numbers of Chinese, restaurants usually provide chopsticks for them. That being said, I would not associate South East asian people with chopsticks. The local people (non-Chinese descendant), especially in rural areas who still keep their own local traditions, will choose fork / spoon over chopsticks if they eat East Asian foods, such as noodle for example. But they are not shy for using chopsticks if it's the only utensil available.

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ITCHY FEET is the weekly web comic about travel, life in foreign countries, and learning new languages. Readers can expect an astonishing array of exaggerated facial expressions, humorous situations involving foreigners and foreign lands, and ordinary silliness.